Among disc player apparatuses which replay from and/or record to discs such as CD and DVD are those provided with a slot-in type disc transporting mechanism in which the disc is transported between a disc transporting roller and a disc guide roller by rotating movement of the transporting roller. The slot-in type disc player apparatuses are used popularly in car audio systems, etc.
Slot-in type disc player apparatuses include: a disc replay unit provided with a turntable and an optical pickup; a disc loading mechanism provided with loading rollers for moving the disc in and out of the disc player, a disc clamping mechanism for placing the disc onto the turntable; and so on, assembled in a case.
In these slot-in type disc player apparatuses, when the disc is moved to a predetermined position in the disc player apparatus, a drive mechanism which drives the transporting roller is disengaged, and the transporting roller no longer is pressed onto the guide roller which guides the disc.
After the pressing state is terminated, a playing unit is unlocked, upon which an end of the loading operation is detected. Thus, the loading operation comes to an end and the playing operation of the disc is started.
When the disc is unloaded and then transported in the slot-in type player apparatus described above, clamping on the disc is released by moving a clamper off the turntable and the disc is sandwiched thereafter between the transporting roller and the guide roller (See Patent Document 1 for example).
In the slot-in type player apparatus described above, arrangements are employed so that the disc surface is protected from damage.
As an example of the arrangements to protect the disc from damage, there is a proposal for a method of eliminating slippage between the disc and the rollers by shifting a drive-power transmission mechanism to stop the rollers immediately, thereby preventing the rollers from idle rotation (see Patent Document 2 for example).
In the conventional slot-in type player apparatus described above, an urging spring such as a coil spring is provided at an end of the roller shaft to urge the roller toward the disc in order to ensure that there is a predetermined friction torque between the roller and the roller shaft.
Conventionally, however, the urging spring requires a burdensome step to assemble, and depending on the way it is assembled, the spring does not provide the predetermined torque.
Meanwhile, in conventional slot-in type player apparatuses, there has been a requirement for a reduced thickness of the apparatus, and due to the requirement, parts and components have increasingly been placed closely to each other than ever before.
This has created a problem that during a disc ejecting operation after the turntable and the clamper are separated from each other, part of the disc hits a clamper arm which supports the clamper before the disc is sandwiched between the transporting roller and the guide roller, making an uncomfortable impact noise for example.
Disc player apparatuses for installation in automobiles have a special arrangement to avoid jumping during replay operation; specifically, the case and the disc replay unit provided therein are made as independent of each other, and the two components are connected with each other by elastic members such as dampers and springs, into a floating state. With such an arrangement as the above, vibrations of the automobile when the automobile is driven is not transmitted from the case, etc. to the disc replay unit provided therein.
These disc player apparatuses are provided with a locking mechanism which locks the disc replay unit to the case thereby establishing a predetermined positional relationship between the disc insertion slot and the disc replay unit when the disc loading mechanism loads/unloads a disc by pressing the rollers onto the disc.
For these disc player apparatuses which are provided with the elastic members such as dampers and springs, proposals have been made for floating lock mechanisms of the disc player apparatus which require a fewer parts and simpler constitution for savings on the manufacturing cost (see Patent Document 3 for example).
For the conventional disc player apparatuses which are provided with the elastic members such as dampers and springs, proposals have been made for ways to simplify the floating lock mechanism. However, no consideration has been disclosed so far on the method for mounting the dampers on the case. A poor positioning of the dampers on the case will cause the dampers to fall off.
[Patent Document 1] JP-A 2002-74800 Gazette
[Patent Document 2] JP-A 2003-141800 Gazette
[Patent Document 3] JP-A 2001-331997 Gazette